An operational and scalable Public Health Atlas for Western Australia, providing access to public health data with spatial and analytical capacity
The Challenge
Public health indicators are a crucial indication of effectiveness and efficiency of public health programs. State and local governments need spatially enabled public health indicators to measure health status, and to identify emerging health issues and trends at various geographical levels (i.e., State, health region, health district, statistical area, local government areas) so that the impacts of public health interventions can be assessed, and future health services and policies can be planned. Currently there is no central tool available to access such information in Western Australia. This project sought to develop such a tool – The Public Health Atlas.
Partners
This project was conducted in collaboration with the WA Department of Health (DOHWA) and Spatial Vision
The Solution
This project aimed to deliver an operational and scalable Public Health Atlas for Western Australia that interfaces with and leverages existing DOHWA epidemiological information platforms, thereby enhancing spatial and analytical capacity through improved visualisation of health-related data. The main objective of the Public Health Atlas was to make available public health data accessible and displayed spatially for making policy decisions and planning public health interventions and services.
The Public Health Atlas presents currently available Public Health indicators, including health and wellbeing survey data collected by DOHWA’s Health Survey Unit (HSU) in the Epidemiology Branch, Communicable Disease data, Environmental Health data and other available data at various geographical scales.
The project involved:
- Consultation with key stakeholders to validate the requirements and understand end-user expectations.
- Data Preparation for ingestion into the Public Health Atlas.
- Development of the Atlas including testing, feedback, and updates.
- Penetration testing for security of the system.
- Full deployment of the Atlas.
- Hosting and maintenance.
Impact
The Atlas highlights variation in public health risk factors and outcomes of people in different regions around Western Australia. It is designed to prompt debate about population health and prevention issues amongst people working in public health about why any differences exist, and to stimulate improvement through this debate. The Atlas will help consumers, public health practitioners, clinicians, health managers and policy makers work out where improvements are needed. It will also address recommendations outlined in the Sustainable Health Review and key deliverables included in the DOHWA Corporate Plan 2020/21.
Contact
To learn more, please contact us at contact@frontiersi.com.au or Project Director Paula Fievez, at pfievez@frontiersi.com.au.